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 urprisingly, I had a lot of hope for "Demons",
and was anticipating its first reveal of the demons that would terrorize our
characters with bated breath. And then the demons were revealed, and all the
hope and expectation I had for Lamberto Bava's 1985 horror film,
"Demons", sank like the intelligence of teen characters in a
"Friday the 13th" film.
Sporting the name Dario Argento prominently,
"Demons" was co-written by Argento, who has made a name for himself as
a master of horror and suspense here in the States. This 1985 effort is not
Argento's best work, if he indeed added some ideas to the screenplay as the
movie boasts. (Frankly, I'm prone to believe that Argento's involvement is akin
to Wes Craven's involvement in movies sporting titles like, "Wes Craven
Presents…Another Crappy Horror Film".)
Starring a bunch of unknowns and dubbed in English, this
unrated version of "Demons" finds a large group of would-be victims
being given free passes to the opening of a new theater. Our eclectic cast of
victims include, but not limited to, two college friends, two horny buddies, a
tough guy pimp and his two ho's, a blind man and his daughter, and a couple of
necking teenagers. Things start getting weird when events in the theater starts
mirroring the horror movie playing onscreen, and soon one of the moviegoers has
been turned into a demon. Unrelenting bloodletting and a lot of useless female
characters screaming uselessly ensue.
"Demons" offers up a stylish opening that,
leading up to the first demon appearance, is better than it has any right to be.
But by the time the first demon rears her ugly and poorly acted head, director
Lamberto Bava chucks everything in favor of random demon killings. Humorously,
it's at this point that the dubbing also seems to go downhill. Strange, because
as the film opened, I was thinking to myself that for an Italian horror film
made in the '80s, the film's English dubbing was actually very serviceable, even
good.
Of the victims, George (Urbano Barberini) and Cheryl
(Natasha Hovey) become our main leads, mostly because they're the most
attractive members of the cast. But like the rest of the female population of
"Demons", Cheryl is pretty much useless, given to bouts of unnecessary
screaming and hysterics when she should be running or fighting. Actually, Cheryl
only has one moment of heroism, but that isn't much to hang your hat on
especially given the fact that the person Cheryl saves wouldn't have needed
saving in the first place if he hadn't been forced to drag Cheryl along all this
time.
Complaining about the story in "Demons" is rather
silly. The movie is completely uninterested in something as mundane as story or
plot, and spends most of its 85 minutes trying to figure out groovy ways to kill
off its victims. We get a number of interesting kills, including eye gouging,
the always popular claw-slash-to-the-chest, neck chewing, and mass decapitations
by a character riding around on a motorcycle in the theater's cramp space
swinging a katana sword.
Although why a motorcycle and a clearly dangerous katana
sword is sitting in the lobby for anyone to just grab and use is beyond me. If
the demon entity had set up the theater just to feast on unsuspecting victims,
you would think it wouldn't leave around a sword to be used against it. (Uh oh,
started thinking. Must…stop…thinking!)
I like gore, don't get me wrong. And "Demons"
certainly provides a lot of gore. It's just that I would like some reason for
the gore. The demons appear pretty much for no apparent reason and runs around
biting and infecting moviegoers. The film spends its entire run with a large
group of characters trying make their way out of the theater, but unfortunately
the doors have all been blocked by concrete walls. Don't even ask where the
concrete walls come from.
If you like mindless bloodletting and well done gore,
you'll love "Demons". The film has zero scares and its killings are
done in a silly, even humorous, manner. The acting is, not surprisingly, sub
par.
"Demons" is not for everyone. It's good in that
it does what it does well, but it's bad in that it does everything else, well,
badly.
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